Slashdot Mirror
Company Files Motion to Stop IE Distribution
RobHornick writes "According to CNET News, Eolas Technologies, a company that's already won a patent infringement judgement against Microsoft regarding Internet Explorer, has filed a motion to stop Microsoft from distributing its IE software until they remove Eolas' patented technology for running plug-ins, or pay up for a license."
The Redmond, Wash., software giant asked for the new trial, citing several factors, including the unusual proportions of the jury's judgment and the court's refusal to allow discussion of some prior art or similar technology that Microsoft believes predated the Eolas patent and should therefore invalidate it.
Microsoft mentioned one piece of prior art in particular, the Viola browser, invented by Perry Pei-Yuan Wei, an artist, software engineer and then a student at the University of California at Berkeley. That browser dates back to 1991 and its plug-in capabilities to 1992, nearly two years before Eolas filed for its patent.
Once again, prior art popping up. So, this whole thing will probably get turned on its head after about 3 more years of litigation.
Sigh.
evil adrian
No, that's a trademark that goes away if it goes unused. Patents, like diamonds, are forever... and often valuable.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I haven't read much about this case, but i have seen two key facts. One is that MS was given the opportunity to license the technology ten years ago and they did not. The second is that the case of prior art presented by MS was a process that was developed contemporaneously with the process under question. It is not clear that one predates the other, and the other process was not patented. There are many examples of simultaneous developments throughout history, and the person who get the credit is often random. Therefore the judge reasonable ruled that no prior art could be specified.
The other two adjoining issues is that MS firmly believes in IP and in particular patents. It would be hypocritical to allow them to hold onto those beliefs only when it is convenient for them. That is what we call inappropriate consequences and is like a bully complaining that a kid who he has been beating up every day for the past year is now aiming a gun at his head. The second is that the browser/plug in model is part of the OS, a situation unique to MS.
I certainly hope that this mess will make the PHB realize that patenting these things is bad. I think at this point they see it as a game. Who can rack up the most frivolous patents, similar to who can screw the most secretaries, or have the youngest spouse. But it has serious consequences. Under the current rules, Eolas Technologies may have the power to stop the distribution of Windows, and god knows what else. That is scary.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Mozilla's answer to this patent is that it only mentions interprocess communication. Mozilla loads the plugin into the same memory space as the browser, as I understand it, so they believe they are outside the scope of the patent. Anyways, to answer your question, this issue has already been brought before the Mozilla developers and they've already addressed it for the time being.
Microsoft used patents to kill ASF support in VirtualDub. See here.
Think about the technology from 1983, would you use that over the current technology?
Well, RSA and LZW were both patented in 1983, and they are widely in use today.
Apparently nobody pays attention or does any research.
First off Eolas has filed the same patent three times (been rejected) and has been narrowing it down.
Basically the patent states:
Any inlining function that renders on the client that gets information from another server. However javascript is not affected, but activex and other plugins are, but the question is the img tag linking to another webpage affected? I know a few places will not allow their sites to have img tags to point to a different server.
This is a stupid patent and should be thrown out. And in fact if we wanted to get into the nitty/gritty details Microsoft could sit there and attack StarOffice/OpenOffice with some of their patents and copyright information and get them out of business.
Imagine if Eolas was "pulling a SCO", they would have been sending out $699 invoices to all IE users; would have been fun to see that play out. Actually, they are hinting to that, the article saying:
Eolas would still permit Microsoft to distribute IE as is, as long as it's being used in conjunction with an application provider or a corporate intranet that has an Eolas plug-in license.
Maybe they can send cease and desist letters to MS' corporate clients now.
On a more serious note, MS was not able to present their prior art case in front of the judge to invalidate the patent. They have appealed and hopefully will get that opportunity. They are also on the right track with Viola browser as prior art. If you read Viola's author's recount:
In April 1992, I made a released of the viola browser. By December 1992, I had embedded objects working in the Viola browser. We at O'Reilly and Associates gave demos to various people here and there. The best documented demo was in May of 1993 -- We gave a demo and code to SUN Microsystems, of the viola browser showing an interactive three dimensional plotting object (mathmatical equation or 3D models) embedded inside a web page. I started releasing this code around fall of 1993 and early 1994. Eolas filed the patent in November 1994.
Now, as you probably know, Michael Doyle (Eolas's CEO and sole formal employee as I understand it), wrote to the net about his technology and eventually intent to patent this. So of course people (including me) wrote back informing him of prior arts. I'm not a lawyer but as I understand it one is supposed to disclose to the PTO any relevant prior art for the PTO examiner to assess. Doyle and I exchange letters, and I told him about this embedded capability in Viola, gave him a paper on viola, which contains pointers leading to more information including even the viola browser source code. Doyle ends up mentioning the browsers Cello and Mosaic, but interestingly not Viola! Now, Viola came before both Cello and Mosaic, and non of those two other browsers had any kind of embedded interactive capability at the core of the discussions.
And he also talks about how he was not allowed to demonstrate his technology (created before Eolas patent was filed) to the jury:
I was not allowed to demonstrate Viola to the jury. It was explained to me that the judge had decided that my demonstration, of the Viola browser from May 1993 showing interactive objects embedded in a web page, would have been too "prejudicial" against Eolas. I was also not allowed to tell the jury that Doyle knew about Viola. This I suppose is understandable but still puzzles me a little and leads to unfortunate effects, as I imagine the Jury ought to know these things.
As you can see, once MS gets a chance to demonstrate these facts, like they should be able to, Eolas can go back to sucking on their thumbs again.